Wednesday 5 November 2008

Topics and Episodes

A week or two ago the Technology Guardian supplement had an article from a US (New York?) professor arguing that we no longer have the appropriate unit of news - articles are too short with too little background, wikipedia not current enough, blogs too fragmented. We really need 'topic' pages combining the best of both, and using links to provide appropriate depth for different readers.

Same is true for fiction. The episode is old, going back at least as far as serialisation of Dickens novels. Now if I want to watch Heroes having not seen it before I don't want to watch each past episode in turn. And the 'last week on' pre-credit sequence is too much detail for regular viewers and not enough for a newbie. So we need to move beyond episodes to a constantly evolving, multi-media page that's up to date but gives you as much background as you need in an appropriately summarised way. The whole Sopranos in an hour anyone?

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